Awaiting release for more than seven years, Quercus is not the first time ECM has branched into the realm of traditional British music combined with jazz improvisation. Unlike the rawer and more unfettered freedom of producer Steve Lake's inspired pairing of singer Robin Williamson with improvisers including violist Mat Maneri, bassist Barre Phillips and Swedish traditionalist Ale Möller on recordings like The Iron Stone (2007), however, Quercus is a more refined, elegant and dark live recording that pairs renowned British singer June Tabor with saxophonist Iain Ballamy—already known to ECM audiences for his electro-centric collaboration with Norwegian percussionist Thomas Strønen in Food, last heard on Mercurial Balm (2012)—and pianist Huw Warren, who like Tabor is making his first ECM appearance here.
This live recording from March, 2006 may be long overdue, but this is not something for which ECM is to blame. As far back as the trio's sublime performance at the 2007 Punkt Festival, in Kristiansand, Norway, Ballamy and Warren were talking about a recording looking for a label. When ECM came into the picture is unclear, but it's fortuitous—as much for its intended audience as the musicians that made the record—that it did.
Tabor, Ballamy and Warren have intersected before. Ballamy first guested in 2005 on Tabor's At the Wood's Heart (Topic), which, also featuring Warren, who'd been playing with the singer for nearly 20 years, debuting on Aqaba (Topic, 1988). At the Woods's Heart featured other musicians, including longtime Tabor accompanist, guitarist Martin Simpson, who'd made herAbyssinians (Shanachie, 1983) a classic of dark, often depressing but still thoroughly compelling traditional fare, but it was clearly where the idea of Quercus—both the name of the trio and its debut recording—first germinated.
Tabor's reputation as a serious singer who'll not take on a song unless it completely resonates with her on some level means that the song selection which has been key to her success since emerging in the mid-'70s with Steeleye Span's Maddy Prior in Silly Sisters—a perfect pairing if ever there was one—is just as essential to Quercus' achievements. The opening "Lassie Lie Near Me," a traditional tune with lyrics from the pen of poet Robert Burns, may be, at its core, a love song, but its minor-keyed structure and Tabor's delivery ensure its painful longing remains intact. Tabor is not a singer to take great liberties with a melody; instead, her interpretive skills are far subtler—the slightest inflection or barest turn of phrase carrying great weight, even when delivered at a near-whisper, and her earthen, low-register range adding even further to its gravitas.
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